United States Senate Research Articles

“For the Advancement and Betterment of Humanity”: The Fight for Women's Suffrage at Utah's Constitutional Convention

“For the Advancement and Betterment of Humanity”: The Fight for Women's Suffrage at Utah's Constitutional Convention

Michael E. Woods. Arguing until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy.

The collapse of the American political system in the decade before the Civil War has been thoroughly studied, including the rise of the Republican Party by Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men (1970) and the collapse of the Democratic Party by Roy Franklin Nichols’s Disruption of the American Democracy (1948). One could cite many other works, but Michael E. Woods claims to be filling a gap left by Nichols. Woods maintains that while there is considerable literature about the split between Republicans and Democrats, there has been less analysis of the Democratic breakup. While Nichols covered only the latter half of the 1850s, Woods views the party’s disintegration through the lens of the life stories of those champions of the northern and southern Democrats, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Both men, of course, have eminent biographers: Robert W. Johannsen on Douglas and William C. Davis on Jefferson Davis. Woods’s dual biographical approach, however, personalizes the story of sectional fissures within the Democratic party. Woods starts with their commonalities, especially their stories as migrants who sought upward mobility through westward settlement. In Davis’s case, his father brought him to Mississippi as a child and he benefited from his brother Joseph’s great success as a planter and enslaver. Douglas emigrated to Illinois as a young man looking to better himself. As Woods shows, Illinois was a free state but tolerated de facto slavery and accommodated powerful anti-black prejudice. Woods is very clear about the uneasy alliance between northerners and southerners within the Democratic Party from its founding. In fact, it is sometimes hard to see what Davis and Douglas had in common as Democrats. Davis and other white southerners were committed to protecting slavery, while Douglas emphasized the westward expansion his southern counterparts often blocked when it did not advance proslavery interests. While Douglas did not originate the ideology of popular sovereignty, i.e., that popular majorities should decide on slavery, he became its leading champion and was uniquely associated with it. Davis is not so much a progenitor of a distinctive ideology as representative of white southerners. In fact, he is often considered to be more adamant in protecting slavery lest he be seen as “soft” on the issue (175). In early 1860, Davis presented proslavery resolutions to the United States Senate, but he was regarded as a moderate rather than a fireater.

Legislative regulation as a component of the formation of healthcare competences of the adults in the USA

The article presents the author's work on the legislative regulation of the formation of healthcare competencies of the adult population in the USA. It has been studied that US lawmakers attach great importance to the outlined problem, which is determined by the large number of legislative acts and the diversity of their direction. The work presents relevant legislative documents and defines their essence. The analysis of the laws adopted by the US Congress on the health care of the adult population made it possible to distinguish 4 directions: Educational component; Improving the activity of medical provision; Support and preservation of personal health; Development of a network of health facilities and sports clubs. The methodological basis of the research is a complex search, analysis, synthesis of regulatory documents and the legal framework of the USA; justification of leading principles and functions; formation of generalized conclusions, identification of rational and practically valuable material. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to analyze the laws adopted by the US Senate and House of Representatives regarding the formation of healthcare competencies of the adult population and borrowing positive experience regarding the possibility of further application in the legislative acts of Ukraine. It is concluded that recognition of the need to ensure the formation of healthcare competencies of the adult population in the USA is being actively resolved at the legislative level. Legal initiatives set out in normative acts on the formation of healthcare competencies of the adult population are aimed at supporting and improving the level of health of the individual, the family, and as a result, ensuring the prosperity of the state in general. We have identified 4 main areas of activity of the US Congress regarding the healthcare of the adult population. We consider it appropriate to borrow the positive experience of the possibility of further application of the main directions in legislative acts and state programs of Ukraine.

A Cognitive View of Martin Luther

The alliance of classical and quantum computing in nature and in Martin Luther’s reading of the Bible may readjust and rejoin religion, philosophy, and science. Luther’s deepest ideas match the vision of the late US Senator Edward Kennedy in seeking the progress of the young, civilization, and the Earth. Their grace may move some heroes/heroines to avert climate crises, the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the premature loss of our grandchildren. Progress may rest on exploring the cognitive roots of Luther’s Reformation. Luther’s bids surpass autistics’ failure to lie by linking Neanderthals’ grasp of nature’s nature and of fire half a million years ago, the Yin-Yang symbol, the junction of Moises’s “Thummim” with his “Urim” stone, the Hindu Trimurti, Kali, Solomon’s wisdom, Quetzalcoatl’s going and return voyages in Mesoamerica, Buddha’s last word “appamāda,” Heraclitus’s philosophy, Jesus’s parables, Muhammad’s going from and return to Mecca in one night, Leonardo da Vinci’s art, and the research method of Galileo.

Testing the Benefits of Public Deliberation

AbstractPublic deliberation grows increasingly prevalent yet remains costly in terms of money and time. Accordingly, some suggest supplanting talk‐based practices with individual, “deliberation within.” Yet we have little evidence either way on the additional benefits of public deliberation over its individual variant. We evaluate the benefits of public deliberation with a field experiment. With the cooperation of two sitting US Senators, we recruited several hundred of their constituents to deliberate on immigration reform. Participants were randomly assigned to either deliberate publicly in an online discussion, to deliberate individually, or to an information‐only control. Across several measures, public deliberation yielded more benefits than individual deliberation. We find, moreover, little evidence to ground worries that differences in education, race, conflict avoidance, gender, or gender composition of deliberating groups will render public talk less valuable than individual deliberation.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

A Legal Confiscation: The 1851 Land Act and the Transformation of Californios into Colonized Colonizers

In 1848, the US Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which held that treaty citizens' land claims would be "inviolably respected." Three years later, the US Senate passed the 1851 Land Claims Act, which violated the treaty by requiring private Mexican land grant holders to prove the legitimacy of their claims to the US Land Commission. This article examines Anglo-American and Californio settlers' efforts to establish legitimate landholding practices according to their culturally specific racial logic. By tracing encounters between the commission and Californios, this article argues that through their participation in the land claims process, Californios became "colonized colonizers" and were instrumental to statemaking in California.

Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party by Marc Johnson

Reviewed by: Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party by Marc Johnson Mark Owens Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party. By Marc Johnson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. 237 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $26.95 paper. In the 48 years between 1933 and 1981, the Republican Party controlled the United States Senate for one Congress (1953–55). Marc Johnson offers a thorough description of the ideological influences that advanced a New Right coalition, one who aggressively sought to oppose liberal ideas in order to challenge the legacy of the Democratic Party's New Deal Coalition. The book includes specific accounts about the modernization of negative campaigning, opposition research, out-of-state fundraising, and use of sensational imagery to distort how the public sees elected officials. The scope of Tuesday Night Massacre focuses on the electoral defeats of senior Democratic incumbent senators in Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, and South Dakota in 1980. This pivotal moment sets up two important perspectives for the role of grassroots movements within the Republican Party. The New Right replaced Democratic senators who shaped national politics—Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senator Frank Church (D-ID), Senator John Culver (D-IA), and Senator George McGovern (D-SD)—with freshmen who were less inclined to seek consensus. The winners—Senator Jim Abdor (R-SD), Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Senator Dan Quayle (R-IN), and Senator Steve Symms (R-ID)—were members of the majority party during their entire first term and supported committee chairmen that wanted to reform government programs. Johnson tells the story of a coordinated effort to nationalize politics by identifying a common organization that implemented new campaign strategies. Extensive archival work and interviews tells how the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) reshaped the Senate five years after it was established. The book focuses on how NCPAC first recruited candidates to run in special elections in 1977. NCPAC then built its reputation by targeting incumbents with national profiles with tactics that elicited fear and resentment to distort the trust voters had for the incumbent. Johnson provides contemporary references that identify NCPAC's effectiveness and concerns about the degree NCPAC may have coordinated with candidates. The book tells the early political stories of a network who shaped Republican politics for 40 years, including Terry Dolan, Roger Ailes, Roger Stone, Richard Viguerie, and others. These operatives helped Newt Gingrich's early elections. NCAPC's approach to recruit candidates and offer resources proliferated when Newt Gingrich created GOPAC in the 1990s. These examples offer a benchmark to understand how Speaker Gingrich learned to embed national discussions locally. The New Right remains influential as the foundation of a national grassroots movement to fundraise, research, and craft messages in ways that "wage war against liberals" (59). The book consistently revisits themes in each chapter, as the candidates and state change. NCPAC strategically chose where to direct its resources. It targeted powerful senior legislators whose national ambition made them out of touch with their constituency. These actions were built on the belief that "populist anger would come to define politics" (119). The explanations of how media strategies and slogans evoked emotional responses from voters elevate the contribution of this book to the history of elections. Mark Owens Department of Political Science and History University of Texas at Tyler Copyright © 2023 Center for Great Plains Studies

The Gofman-Tamplin Cancer Risk Controversy and Its Impact on the Creation of BEIR I and the Acceptance of LNT.

The major public dispute between John Gofman and his colleague Arthur Tamplin and the United States (US) Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) at the end of the 1960s and during the early 1970s significantly impacted the course of cancer risk assessment in the US and worldwide. The challenging and provocative testimony of Gofman to the US Senate in early 1970 lead to the formation of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) I Committee in order to evaluate the accuracy of claims by Gofman and Tamplin that emissions from nuclear power plants would significantly increase the occurrence of genetic defects and cancers. BEIR I recommended the adoption of the linear non-threshold (LNT) dose response model for the assessment of cancer risks from radiation exposures. The US EPA adopted this recommendation and generalized it to incorporate chemical carcinogens, thereby affecting cancer risk assessments over the next decades. Despite the scientific limitations and ideological framework of their perspectives, Gofman and Tamplin are of considerable historical importance since they had essential roles in affecting the adoption of LNT by regulatory agencies.

Lacy—Zarubin Agreement of 1958: Origins of Soviet-American Science Diplomacy

The Agreement between the USSR and the USA on exchanges in the field of culture, technology, science and education, signed on January 27, 1958 in Washington DC by W. S. Lacy US Secretary of State Special Assistant for East-West Exchanges, and G. N. Zarubin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to the USA is considered. The question is raised about the role of this agreement in the Soviet- American science diplomacy of the late 1950s — early 1960s. Based on a review of the biographies of senior officials who participated on the American and Soviet sides in its conclusion and implementation, the personality factor in these scientific and diplomatic processes was investigated. It is proved that their high professionalism, pragmatism and the similarity of career paths had a positive impact both on reaching mutual understanding regarding the interstate agreement being concluded, and on giving the latter an extremely specific character. Particular attention is paid to the provisions of the Lacy—Zarubin agreement, which regulated the visits of scientists and researchers, as well as academic exchanges. To assess the effectiveness of the treaty implementation in this part, the Report of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations dated August 20, 1959, prepared under the leadership of Senator J. Fulbright, was introduced as a source and analyzed in detail. It is noted that the clarity in determining the goals, means and ways to achieve them allowed the Lacy—Zarubin agreement to become a solid and resistant to juncture fluctuations in the conditions of the Cold War, the basis for scientific and technical cooperation between the USSR and the USA, which determined the vector of their development over the decade and a half that followed the signing of the document.

A critical review of the US Senate examination report on the 2021 US Capitol riot.

The US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, is currently regarded as an unprecedented armed occupation of the US Capitol that left an irreparable stain on the history of American democracy. Five months later, as part of reflective practice, the US Senate released an examination (review) report on the response failures of federal and local law enforcement agencies, along with corresponding recommendations. This research seeks to critically analyze not only response failures but also recommendations made by the US Senate with a comprehensive theoretical framework incorporating concepts of (1) legitimacy and power, (2) procedural justice, and (3) crowd psychology and the protest policing model. In the end, the research tries to present a practical cooperative dialogue or at least a dialogic approach as a means of strengthening legitimacy based on procedural justice, given that not only European countries but also the Republic of Korea currently operate '(Korean and Swedish) Dialogue Police' and (British) 'Police Liaison Officer' in practice.

Status and mortality: Is there a Whitehall effect in the United States?

AbstractThe influential Whitehall studies found that top‐ranking civil servants in Britain experienced lower mortality than civil servants below them in the organizational hierarchy due to differential exposure to workplace stress. I test for a Whitehall effect in the United States using a 1930 cohort of white‐collar employees at a leading firm – General Electric (GE). All had access to a corporate health and welfare program during a critical period associated with the health transition. I measure status using position in the managerial hierarchy, attendance at prestigious management training camps and promotions, none of which is associated with a Whitehall‐like rank‐mortality gradient. Instead, senior managers and executives experienced a 3–5‐year decrease in lifespan relative to those in lower levels, with the largest mortality penalty experienced by individuals in the second level of the hierarchy. I discuss generalizability and potential explanations for this reversal of the Whitehall phenomenon using additional data on the status and lifespan of top business executives and US senators.

US Chemical Safety Board issues delayed reports

The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) in December concluded three long-stalled accident investigation reports. The board also released a study concluding that over the last 2.5 years, 224 incidents occurred in the US that were serious enough to trigger a CSB investigation. The incidents killed 31 people and caused 126 serious injuries; 101 of the events resulted in over $1 million in damages. Also in December, the US Senate confirmed a new CSB member, Catherine J. K. Sandoval , and elevated CSB member Stephen Owens to chair the safety board. The CSB now has three members, short of its legally set level of five. The 25-year-old board’s charge is to investigate and determine the root cause of significant chemical accidents; recommend improvements to operations of refineries, chemical plants, laboratories, and other facilities; and boost federal and state regulatory oversight of these sites. An accumulation of unfinished investigations

Partisanship on Social Media: In-Party Love Among American Politicians, Greater Engagement with Out-Party Hate Among Ordinary Users

Americans view their in-party members positively and out-party members negatively. It remains unclear, however, whether in-party affinity (i.e., positive partisanship) or out-party animosity (i.e., negative partisanship) more strongly influences political attitudes and behaviors. Unlike past work, which relies on survey self-reports or experimental designs among ordinary citizens, this pre-registered project examines actual social media expressions of an exhaustive list of American politicians as well as citizens’ engagement with these posts. Relying on 1,195,844 tweets sent by 564 political elites (i.e., members of US House and Senate, Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees from 2000 to 2020, and members of the Trump Cabinet) and machine learning to reliably classify the tone of the tweets, we show that elite expressions online are driven by positive partisanship more than negative partisanship. Although politicians post many tweets negative toward the out-party, they post more tweets positive toward their in-party. However, more ideologically extreme politicians and those in the opposition (i.e., the Democrats) are more negative toward the out-party than those ideologically moderate and whose party is in power. Furthermore, examining how Twitter users react to these posts, we find that negative partisanship plays a greater role in online engagement: users are more likely to like and share politicians’ tweets negative toward the out-party than tweets positive toward the in-party. This project has important theoretical and democratic implications, and extends the use of trace data and computational methods in political behavior.

The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion

The Reed Smoot Hearings: The Investigation of a Mormon Senator and the Transformation of an American Religion

Information design to support growth, quality, and equity of the US transplant system

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, an arm of the Health Resources and Services Administration, has a contract with the United Network for Organ Sharing since 1986 to provide central oversight of organ donation and transplants in the United States. The United Network for Organ Sharing has recently come under scrutiny, prompting a review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as summarized in its recent report and also by the US Senate Finance Committee. The national news services have opined about organ donation ethics, access to transplantation particularly for medically underserved populations, and management of organ transplantation data. These critiques raise important concerns that deserve our best response as a transplant community. Broadly, we suggest that the data management approach of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network be replaced with a patient-centric omnichannel network in which all donor and recipient data exist in a single longitudinal record that can be used by all applications. A more comprehensive and standardized approach to donor data collection would drive quality improvement across organ procurement organizations and help address inequities in transplantation. Finally, a substantial increase in organ donation would be prompted by considering organ donors as a public health resource, meriting transparent publicly available data collection with respect to organ donor referral, screening, and management.

The Open Society and Its Complexities

<i>The Open Society and Its Complexities</i>

A szabad és a kötött mandátum alkotmányjogi összefüggései a föderális második kamarák képviseleti rendszerében : Összehasonlító elemzés

This paper discusses the nature of the parliamentary mandate in the context of federal second chambers. While the free mandate is understood as a paradigmatic element of modern representative institutions, there are certain houses where members have an imperative mandate, meaning they can be recalled or given instructions. By comparing the German Bundesrat, where members are delegates of state governments and have an imperative mandate, and the US Senate, where senators are constitutionally independent of their electorate, we focus on the conceptual relationship between the logic of representation that a chamber is based on and the nature of the mandate. The paper shows that the free mandate is related to the representation of the nation, while the imperative mandate is a means to represent subnational, territorial interests.

Rashysm: license for genocide

Rashysm: license for genocide

Tennessee's New South: Marquita Bradshaw and Her Call for Environmental Justice

ABSTRACT: In 2020 Marquita Bradshaw became the first African American woman to win a state-wide race in Tennessee, soaring past her establishment opponents to clinch the Democratic primary for United States Senate. Throughout her campaign, Bradshaw evoked the increasingly popular progressive rallying cry "New South." Bradshaw's vision for a New South is characterized by her call for environmental justice. By speaking about her personal experience with environmental racism, Bradshaw organized a compelling campaign rooted in environmental justice and economic equity based on class solidarity. This article analyzes the powerful yet often overlooked part of Bradshaw's campaign: the religious underpinnings of her environmental justice advocacy. It also examines the historical significance of Bradshaw's use of the term "New South" and how Bradshaw interprets Memphis journalist Ida B. Wells as an inspiration for her movement.